Picture #71 - Brown Bear

Taken at Dartmoor Zoological Park, Devon, England.

Samsung GX-10 + Tamron 18-250 f/3.5-6.3 @ 250mm, f/6.3, 1/250 sec, ISO 400

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Picture #70 - Tiger

Taken at Dartmoor Zoological Park, Devon, England.

Samsung GX-10 + Tamron 18-250 f/3.5-6.3 @ 250mm, f/6.3, 1/400 sec, ISO 100

Image hosted on Zenfolio - click to view in gallery.

Picture #69 - Hungarian Vizsla

Samsung GX-10 + Tamron 18-250 f/3.5-6.3 @ 250mm, f/6.3, 1/160 sec, ISO 100

Image hosted on Zenfolio - click to view in gallery.

Samsung GX-10 - Sunpak Auto 383 Super

Anyone looking for a cheap flash for their Samsung GX-10 or Pentax K10D may want to consider this model. It doesn’t support P-TTL or High Speed Sync but you can still get good use out of it especially if you’re interested in trying out the methods described on the Strobist site.

The model I have can safely be used on the camera and I’ve ordered some cheap wireless triggers from ebay to allow me to use it off camera. The total cost is going to be around £60 which is a fraction of the cost of a dedicated Samsung or Pentax flash here in the UK.

The flash has 3 auto modes, manual setting down to 1/16th power, swivel and tilt. Getting good exposures in-doors has been easy so far. First set the camera in manual, e.g. aperture 5.6, ISO 200, and shutter speed of 1/180th sec or less. Then use the auto settings on the flash to match the aperture and ISO and you’re set to go. Once I’ve done this I can use the swivel and tilt to bounce the flash off the wall or ceiling and the exposure has stayed pretty much spot on with the results so much better than trying to use the built-in flash.

Reading the specifications of the flash I was a bit concerned the flash re-cycle time between shots was going to be a problem. In practice this has not been an issue. Using it in auto-mode with some ambient light it has been ready to fire again almost immediately. It’s only if the flash needs to operate at full power that the re-cycle time slows down.

So far it’s been money well spent and of course once the wireless triggers arrive I can get the flash of camera, study the strobist site, and hopefully get even better results.

Zenfolio export plugin for Lightroom 1.3

If you use Lightroom and Zenfolio you’ll want to check out this post - “Lightroom 1.3 & Export Plugins for SmugMug and Zenfolio” - on Jeffrey Friedl’s blog. He’s written a plugin for Lightroom that will allow you to upload images directly to Zenfolio.

Of course if you haven’t got a Zenfolio account you can get a $5 dollar discount if you sign up with my referral code - NFF-NSE-63Z -

Update: The download page for the Zenfolio plugin is here.

Picture #68 Red Deer Stag

I went to a local farm shop today where they have some deer and bison herds. I managed to get a few photos but I need to go back and find a vantage point where I can get rid of the fences in the background so they don’t look so captive.

Samsung GX-10 + Tamron 18-250 f/3.5-6.3 @ 250mm, f/6.2, 1/160 sec, ISO 160

Image hosted on Zenfolio - click to view larger version in gallery.

Picture #67 - Black Rhino

Another picture from the recent Paignton Zoo trip.

Samsung GX-10 + Tamron 18-250 f/3.5-6.3 @ 250mm, f/6.3, 1/160 sec, ISO 320

Image hosted on Zenfolio, click here to view image in gallery.

Picture #66 - Baby Rhino is growing up

Back in March I posted pictures of the new baby rhino born at Paignton Zoo. Last weekend we went back to the zoo and got some more pictures. At 7 months old the calf is now a miniature replica of it’s mum. Looking at the first picture below, is this the calf or the adult?

It’s the calf and you can see how much it’s grown from the second picture which shows mother and calf together.

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Single image tone mapping

I’ve been playing with the trial version of Dynamic-Photo HDR as I often like the look of other peoples HDR images. As I haven’t yet got a series of bracketed exposures to try it on I thought I’d give the tone mapping a try on a single image. I picked one I recently took from Padstow with a fairly dramatic sky which seems to be the type of image that can benefit from the HDR treatment.

It only took a few minutes tweaking a few sliders to get what I think is a fairly pleasing and dramatic result. The saved file was very noisy but a quick run through Neat Image soon sorted that out.

Here’s the finished image with the original shown below. What do think?

The original.

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Picture #65 - Little Egret in Camel estuary

If you want the chance to take some pictures of Little Egrets in Cornwall then make a visit to Padstow on the river Camel estuary. This picture was taken from the roadway where the Camel Trail cycle way starts. If I’d had more time it would have been easy to get much closer and get a decent backdrop but it was a case of get a quick shot and move on.

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